Shroom Forest and Surf Danger have those issues (unless Shroom was updated, haven't played that in over a year)

Shroomforest yes indeed had that issue but it was the very old version (v1 I believe as not many ppl played that version) and that got fixed in v2. Another map that had that issue was pirates v3_1fix as that got fixed in v3_2 as well.

Creating unnecessary entities is a no no. Hell, you could make it a Func_Wall, func_physbox, func_brush, etc and do the same thing. You're better off to just use the proper tool for the job, and only use those silly work arounds when you have no choice.

Nodraw should be used over invisible, playerclip and or trigger in the following situations:

- When using on triggers
- When using on dynamic brushes such as func_brush, func_wall, func_door, func_button, triggers, ... if the desired effects is to activate something or block players/physics while keeping everything invisible. Disable shadows manually when possible.
- On func_occluders

Nodraw is not advised in the following situations:

- func_detail if the block(s) can be seen and/or will be touchable by the player with the intent of blocking attacks and players for visibility. This causes shadows to be cast (with effect as if out of 'nowhere') and will simply make it look ugly and unprofessional to be used where players are to be. Use the playerclip, clip or invisible as func_detail. Not only will it not cut unnecessary visleafs but the facecount will be less heavier. Each lightmap from a World brush counts 6 times heavier than a lightmap of a face from a func_detail. This is true for playerclip, clip, invisible, trigger, areaportal, occluder and hint. There could be more I'm missing out but you should pretty much remember everything except Skip and Nodraw (or any texture with the %compilenodraw).
- func_viscluster which apparantly could cause errors during compile when used with nodraw. Use trigger instead.
- displacements

Why use this over any other texture when possible? Because Nodraw will eliminate any planes that count towards the plane limit (quickly reached in Hammer) and as such allows for other, more important brushes to use textures instead. Commonly necessary in ZE maps, but barely necessary in normal mapmodes (such as Bomb Defusal, Hostage Rescue, any form of an official map mode).